KINDRED by Octavia E. Butler

Originally Published in 1979.

Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006) was a science fiction author who won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, both for novelettes. Kindred, though, is not a novelette - it is a full length novel and one of the best novels that I have read in a long time. This book could easily end up being the best book I will read this year.

Dana is a 26 year old African American woman. The year is 1976, she and her husband are celebrating her 26th birthday at their home. Suddenly, she feels faint. When her mind clears, she is in the woods by a river. She sees a young boy drowning in the water. She dives in, pulls him out, revives him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and is rewarded by having a gun put to her face.
...and she disappears and ends up back in her house and soaking wet. Her husband tells her that she's only been gone a few seconds.

A few hours later, she disappears again. The same boy is in danger and she saves him again - but he is a few years older now. She determines that she is in the early 1800's in Maryland on a slave plantation. She has saved the white son of the plantation owner twice but, unlike the last time she doesn't return to 1976 right away and now has to accommodate her 1976 ways of thinking to the ways of a slave plantation.

1976 wasn't the most inclusive of times, but it certainly was a damn sight better than living on a slave plantation in the early 1800's.

Dana eventually returns to 1976 after she is nearly killed. However, she is only starting a cycle of ever-lengthening stays in the past...

Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006)

It is interesting to me that this piece of science fiction has the most detailed description of the day-to-day dangers and hardships of American slavery - much more than anything that I have read in a history book. Really, the only thing that came close was a personal tour that my family took of a slave plantation that was owned by a university. The university was studying the financial, personal and genealogical records of that plantation and their neighboring plantations in an effort to understand how they worked day to day and how they worked over the generation.  This tour was completely "off of the books" and was not subject to the sanitizing process that most public tours undergo.

I think this novel is so effective because it is a modern woman with a modern way of looking at things that has to figure out the rules of a slave plantation. She can't let on that she can read, she can't speak her mind, she can't look white people in the face (in 1976 she is married to a white man and he ends up accidentally getting brought back in time with her at one point), she has to follow the "rules" that the slaves have among themselves.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. Highly recommended.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Kindred by Octavia E. Butler.

WALKING on the SEA of CLOUDS: A SAGA of the FIRST COLONY on the MOON (audiobook) by Gray Rinehart

Published in 2019 by WordFire Press LLC.
Read by Stephanie Minervino.
Duration: 13 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

In the year 2034 a private corporation is making an attempt to build a colony on the surface of the moon to act as a home base for asteroid miners. They make the long run from the moon to the asteroid belt and back so that the lunar base can refine the metals found in the asteroids. It's a solid plan, but it has to start with almost nothing and work it's way to the kind of lunar colony you see in the movies.

The world of 2034 is different in some ways. There are early references to some sort of traumatic biological problem, such as rampant infectious disease. A great deal of the early parts of the book is devoted to Stormie and Frank Pastorelli, two prospective lunar colonists that expose themselves to the risk of contracting a bloodborne pathogens when they help the victims of a car crash. The lengths they go to cleanse themselves of pathogens and the fear exhibited by other potential colonists tell me that this was not HIV or hepatitis. Sadly, it is never explained what the infection could have been even though the infection story line comes up again and again throughout the entire book.

NASA is rarely mentioned in Walking on the Sea of Clouds because this colony is a private venture. Imagine if Elon Musk and Space-X decided to go the moon and you get the idea. But, it's not entirely a company operation - there are independent contractors that manage parts of the small-but-growing lunar colony and there are independent contractors that deliver goods. It all can be very complicated and decidedly not glamorous to hash out who has what responsibilities with the lawyers - just like most corporate gigs.

If you remember the literary devices you learned about in school (man vs. man, man vs. self, man vs. nature) - this book is almost entirely man vs. nature - the nature is the harsh environment of the moon. It is the ultimate unforgiving environment - it is so cold that you will die almost instantly upon exposure, it has no atmosphere so you can't even take a breath and fluids burn away immediately when the sunlight hits them. The temperature extremes (more than a 500+ degree Fahrenheit difference) are tough on the machinery and the dust...well the dust gets everywhere and unlike Earth dust, it can be sharp and jagged (no weathering to take off the harsh edges) and it can tear up all sorts of stuff.

Building a colony in such conditions can be a tedious venture. You cannot just say "good enough for now" and then come back and fix the leaks later on once the colony starts to make some money. It all has to be perfect on the first try or people die.

The audiobook was read by Stephanie Minervino. She was given a hard task in this book - there are a lot of male voices and there are a variety of accents (the first lunar colonies will have to access talent from around the world). She did a strong job with this book.

This book gives the reader a taste of what our first lunar colonists (I do believe that we will be there eventually - NASA is making rumblings about it again) will be up against. It will be, as noted above, a tedious venture. Tedious things do not make the best topics for a book and there are times when this book drags. It is is not a horrible book by any means - but it suffers from peaks and valleys and some of the valleys are pretty big.

I am giving this book 3 stars out of 5. It is not the most riveting of books, but this is a must listen/must read book if you are interested in getting a glimpse of the difficulties in the eventual colonizing of the moon.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: WALKING on the SEA of CLOUDS: A SAGA of the FIRST COLONY on the MOON.

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook from the author in exchange for an honest review. 

THE WAR BEFORE the WAR: FUGITIVE SLAVES and the STRUGGLE for AMERICA'S SOUL from the REVOLUTION to the CIVIL WAR (audiobook) by Andrew Delbanco

Published in 2018 by Penguin Audio.
Read by Ari Fliakos.
Duration: 13 hours, 40 minutes.
Unabridged.

Simply described, The War Before the War is an in-depth look at the slavery controversy in the United States from its very beginnings through the Civil War. I am an avid reader of books that explore American slavery and the Civil War. Anyone that denies that slavery wasn't THE issue that pushed America to Civil War is deluding themselves and simply has not read the statements that five of the seceding states (Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia) issued in 1860 and 1861. Slavery was the most discussed item in four of the five declarations (Virginia's brief declaration does not mention many specifics but does refer to "the oppression of Southern Slaveholding states").

As the reader goes through this book it is easy to see that slavery was always a difficult problem for every generation of Americans to deal with. The Founders wrestled with it and ultimately kicked it down the road for later generations to deal with. By the 1850's the problem had come to a head. Interestingly, the thing that brought it to a head was a problem that rarely happened - what to do with runaway slaves.

When compared to the total slave population, very few slaves actually escaped and almost none made it to a free state. But, when a slave was caught in a free state, the media made a story out of it. Who can blame them? It was a riveting story. What was more important - property rights of the individual slave owner or the rights of a man to have his day in court to prove that he was actually a free man in court before he was taken away into bondage? What was more important - the right of a state to protect the property rights of its slaveholders throughout the country or the rights of a free state to declare slavery null and void within its borders?

When a slave was caught in the north and the process started to take him or her back to slavery the political system would often boil over. Both sides came to out, protested, wrote letters to the editor, gave speeches in Congress and generally used the occasion to rally their bases. The author makes a valuable point when he points out this is the same thing that modern political movements do (Black Lives Matter, Pro- and Anti-Abortion activists, immigration, etc.).

The book also looks at what individuals did when confronted with these problems. I was particularly struck by the judge that returned slaves in his courtroom but allowed his home to be used as an Underground Railroad stop by his grown children. He didn't actively help - he just actively ignored the extra people sleeping in his house from time to time.

This is an amazing book. I didn't think I could really learn a lot more about this topic. This will be my 108th review of a book that will be tagged "civil war" and the 77th book that will be tagged "slavery". But, seeing it all laid out in one big sweep is powerful. A great follow-up would be this book: Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865.

The audiobook was read by Ari Fliakos who did a fantastic job.

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. Strongly recommended.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE WAR BEFORE the WAR: FUGITIVE SLAVES and the STRUGGLE for AMERICA'S SOUL from the REVOLUTION to the CIVIL WAR by Andrew Delbanco.

DECLARATION: THE NINE TUMULTUOUS WEEKS WHEN AMERICA BECAME INDEPENDENT, MAY 1 - JULY 4, 1776 by William Hogeland

Published in 2010 by Simon and Schuster

When you read the history books, it seems obvious that the colonies steadily worked their way up to declaring their independence without much of a hitch.

The beauty of William Hogeland's Declaration is that he shows that it was a lot closer than the history books usually portray. Samuel Adams and his cousin John Adams maneuvered many of the representatives to the Continental Congress into voting for independence and certainly manipulated the government of Pennsylvania. In fact, you could make the case that they toppled the government of Pennsylvania through a powerful media campaign combined with timely advice and political pressure and installed a pro-independence government just in time for the fateful vote.

But, this new (to me) information was marred by a difficult to read text. The book just bounced around - the writing style just never got into a flow. I found it hard to read more than a page or two at a time.

Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

On top of that, there are 56 pages of end notes with commentary. If this book were published back in the "bad old days" when typesetting was labor intensive, I would understand why it was done as end notes - it was a pain to work out all of the foot notes. But, in today's world, almost all of the complicated work of footnotes is done by a computer. If it is worth the author's time to make 56 pages of commentary in your end notes, it is worth turning them in to foot notes so that people will actually read them.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5 - interesting information, poorly presented.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, May 1 - July 4, 1776.

AN AMERICAN SUMMER: LOVE and DEATH in CHICAGO (audiobook) by Alex Kotlowitz

Published in March of 2019 by Random House Audio.
Read by by the author, Alex Kotlowitz.
Duration: 9 hours, 53 minutes.
Unabridged.

Journalist Alex Kotlowitz has written several books about race, crime and life in the Midwest rust belt. An American Summer focuses on Chicago's most violent neighborhoods. How violent are they? In the past 20 years, 14,033 people have been killed and another 60,000 have been injured by other people shooting guns. Just to compare, it is as if the entire population of Scranton, PA or Ogden, UT or Napa, CA were all killed or wounded by gunfire.

But, it's not like all of Chicago experiences this violence. It is really just a few neighborhoods - so the impact is a lot like a civil war is going on in a medium-sized city. Everyone knows someone who has been shot and most people know someone that has been killed. That takes a toll on the survivors and that is what this book is about. 

Kotlowitz follows nine stories from these neighborhoods. Some were victims, some hurt others and some did both. Most of these stories are unrelentingly sad. Some were a little hopeful and one was downright inspiring.

The reader learns about the cycle of violence, how city officials have tried to help and fail and how the police can become just another violent part of a violent neighborhood. Chicago Police Department has paid out $662 million in damages for police misconduct since 2004.

This is a sobering, well-written book. Not an easy listen, but an important one.

This book was read by the author, Alex Kotlowitz. He did an excellent job.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  AN AMERICAN SUMMER: LOVE and DEATH in CHICAGO by Alex Kotlowitz.

Please check out this book as well: ALL the DREAMS WE'VE DREAMED: A STORY of HOOPS and HANDGUNS on CHICAGO'S WEST SIDE by Rus Bradburd.

THE LITTLE PRINCE by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Illustrations by the author.
Translated from French to English by Richard Howard.

The Little Prince is a classic novel, voted the best French book of the 20th Century. It is written in deceptively simple language - so simple that a French teacher colleague of mine has her advanced French students read it in the original French every year.

But, don't let the simple style fool you - this book packs a lot of big ideas about the foibles of modern living and adulthood into this small book about a space traveler who lands in the Sahara desert. The space traveler (the Little Prince) meets a crash-landed pilot and shares the story of his travels.

I read the book easily over a weekend while on a camping trip. I read it on my Kindle phone app. Because the author's illustrations are just as iconic as the book itself, the folks at Kindle decided to scan the pages in the way they are published. I have no problem with that, but my phone app did not let me enlarge the pages in any way with a zoom feature. At times, the text was pretty tough to read. Because of that, I am going to deduct a star from my overall score - I am reviewing the Kindle version and the Kindle version has a weakness.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Little Prince. 

THE SECRET LIFE of BEES by Sue Monk Kidd

Originally published in 2002.

The Secret Life of Bees is set in the summer of 1964. Lily Owens is a young teenager living in small town South Carolina on a peach farm. Her mother died when she was very young, her father is abusive. Her best moments at home come when she is with the housekeeper, Rosaleen. 

The story starts immediately after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Rosaleen, who is African American, decides that she is going to go into town and register to vote. Rosaleen meets some resistance, reacts and gets arrested. Then, she gets a beating and ends up hospitalized. Lily breaks her out and they flee to another small town - Tiburon.

Why Tiburon?

Lily only has a few trinkets from her mother and one of them is a piece of paper with an African American Virgin Mary with Tiburon, SC written on the back. She is determined to find out more about her mother and save her stand-in mother.

When they get to Tiburon, they are directed to "the pink house" and discover a thriving honey business ran by three African American sisters. Lily and Rosalee learn about bees and family as Lily tries to figure out her mother's connection to this place...

There are obvious connections to other Southern "coming of age" stories like A Member of the Wedding or Huckleberry Finn, but this book is unique. The religious angle alone sets it apart (for both good and bad). It is certainly worth your time to read.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 4 and it can be found on Amazon.com here: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.